The retirement of DY Chandrachud from office as the 50th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India on November 10 at the mandatory retirement age of 65, marks an important milestone in the checkered history of India’s judiciary.
During his eight-year career as a judge of the Supreme Court and two years as CJI, Chandrachud adjudicated several game-changing cases that have altered the course of Indian history. Among them: the electoral bonds case, Ayodhya Ram temple dispute, decriminalization of homosexuality, Sabarimala temple women’s access case, same-sex marriages and revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. “I have left the judicial system better than I found it,” said Chandrachud in his farewell address. But better is not good enough.
India’s legal system is burdened with 51 million pending cases of which 83,000 are pending in the Supreme Court, 6 million in 23 high courts and 45 million in subordinate courts. It’s the largest arrears case load worldwide. The average time taken for resolution of a civil case in India is five-ten years. Clearly Chandrachud — by common consensus the most technology and business literate CJI in post-independence India’s legal history — should have been given more time to address the issue of the law’s delay.
Therefore, the first issue that needs to be reviewed is the retirement age of judges. The mandatory retirement of the evidently youthful CJI Chandrachud is tantamount to wasteful throwaway of highly experienced judicial talent. In this day and age, compulsorily retiring highly experienced high court judges at 62 and Supreme Court judges at 65, is foolish waste of talent. In the US, Supreme Court judges serve for life unless incapacitated by illness or voluntary retirement because there’s healthy awareness of the value of judicial experience. In addition to appointing more judges — India’s judges to population ratio is 21 per million cf.107 per million in the US and 51 in the UK with even communist China appointing 159 per million — the national interest necessitates extension of retirement age of upper judiciary judges and simultaneous increase in the number of judges systemwide with immediate effect.
Secondly, it’s now plainly evident that the judiciary, unschooled in organisational and business management, cannot modernise and streamline the judicial system. Therefore, external management consultancy firms need to be called in to devise a rules and regulations-based legal system in which loquacious counsels’ time in presenting arguments and cross examining witnesses is circumscribed, prolix paperwork is reduced and adjournments are restricted. The experience of the past seven decades and emergence of India’s mountainous caseload is proof that administrative reform of the legal system is beyond the collective capability of the judiciary. Democracy, rule of law and ease of doing business necessarily require an efficient legal system. Sine qua non.